No - review

The much heralded Chilean director, Pablo Larrain (Tony Manero (2008) and Post Mortem (2010)) completes his Pinochet trilogy with the critically acclaimed No starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

No stars Bernal as a cynical young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra asked to spearhead the 'No' campaign for those opposing the dictatorial regime led by General Pinochet, and attempt to bring democracy to Chile.

Larrain uses his methodical eye and observational style to bring to the screen a perfectly rendered 1980s set film; pleasingly the film harkens back to the start of the campaign as we follow them using scant resources and being under constant scrutiny from colleagues and the Pinochet regime.

At stake for the dissidents is a chance for freedom and to be as affluent as they wish they could be.  The irony is not lost on the audience when we first me Rene who is pitching a campaign for a new soft drink, called 'Free'.  It is telling though that in the country, everyone speaks in whispers, scared to say anything against the totalitarian regime and end up dead like so many before them.

Larrain cleverly mixes scripted and imagined scenes with carefully selected archive footage, and kudos to cinematographer Sergio Armstrong for shooting with a 1983 U-matic camera so we cannot distinguish between the imagined and the real 1980s footage.

Credit also to Bernal for taking a role that is neither built on his in-built charm, nor a man who is a charmer - Rene is the son of a dissident and yet he remains honest in his pursuit of the campaign and the ultimate victory.  The contrast and similarities with Ben Affleck's Argo are noticeable - the beards, the anti-totalitarian regime, the faithfulness to the era the film is set in.

No is one of the most compelling and visually daring films of recent memory.

It is released on DVD (£19.99 rrp) and also on iTunes (£13.99 HD rrp or £3.49 to rent) and the Curzon Home Cinema, courtesy of Network Releasing.
Special features include an interview with Pablo Larrain; a conversation with Gael Garcia Bernal at Curzon Soho; a Q&A with Larrain from the 56th London Film Festival and image gallery

My thanks to Network Releasing for the opportunity to review this title.

Nostalgia for the Light

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman returns with another documentary this time that is at times both deeply personal and yet extremely political.

Nostalgia for the Light is set about the Atacama desert in Chile; where the inhospitable climate and high altitude made it ideal for the building of an observatory which was opened in 1977.  The message of bringing the universe closer to home shows an aspirational tone of the South American nation.

Yet in the same vicinity there is a dark undertone, during the General Pinochet dictatorship used the desert for the Chacabuco Mine prisons were people opposed to the regime would be taken to concentration camps and ultimately killed.  Later bodies were left in mass graves in the Atacama.  Now widows and families scavenge the harsh terrain for any trace of loved ones that may remain; this tone of desperation is in stark contrast to the aspiration and hope for attainment of the universe.

Guzman is an intelligent filmmaker and is keen to mark the distinction between the sky and the ground; giving both stories an equal platform.  Guzman's interview with one widow, Violeta Barrios, is particularly wrenching in its honesty.

Clearly the notion and metaphor of astronomy is a clever one; many of those interviewed state how Chile needs a telescope to look into the ground of the desert to find its past; whereas the telescope itself is something looking towards the future.

Guzman shoots with a good eye when he looks upward, showing scenes of great mystery and magic in the stars whilst giving a look of another world on the Chilean landscape.

A film that although the notion of a documentary may not appeal, it is certainly a film that values the time and commitment.

Nostalgia for the Light is out on Friday 13th July on limited release and is distributed by New Wave Films

Bonsai

Based upon the award-winning cult novella of the same name by Alejandro Zambra, fellow countryman Chilean Cristian Jimenez has described his second feature, Bonsai, as a tribute to the art of lying.

The film centres on Julio (Diego Noguera) an introvert who wants to be a writer, however when he is turned dow by Gazmuri - an established novelist - to transcribe his latest oeuvre, Julio decides to write his own to impress his next door neighbour Bianca (Trinidad Gonzalez), however Julio is easily distracted and he ends up entangled with his memories of the past illicit affair he shared with Emilia (Natalia Galgani) some eight years previously.

Jimenez uses this device of looking back at one affair in order to kick start a new one with a simple flashback/flash forward device - whilst Julio is an unreliant narrator he nevertheless is unable to decipher the difference between the two source material, and so becomes the subject of his own book. 

The profoundity of the situation should not be lost on Julio who we meet first reading Proust, after initially saying he had already done so.  This existentialsim will also be lost on Julio ultimately, as he loses sight of the present by focusing too much on the past.  There are two funny jokes about Proust at the film's beginning - Julio lies about reading it, gets a copy, goes to a beach to read it and falls asleep in doing so after three pages and then endures a suntan on his chest of the books outline having fallen asleep.

Bonsai is a film about memory and how the past intrudes upon your present and inevitable future.  Jimenez cleverly gives the two women - Emilia and Bianca - different tones when we see their stories when with Julio.  Emilia is dark, morbid and full of shadow harking her emotional fragility, whilst Bianca's world is bright, sunny and full of optimism and promise for Julio, the tone is helped by the work of cinematographer Inti Briones.

There are few surprises though when it comes to it, as in the opening sequence the film's narrator states, 'Emilia dies and Julio will remain alone.  The rest is fiction', and Jimenez joyfully has fun with his free adaptation of Zambra's novella with the arrangement of the film in chapters to make this an objective love story for a besotted soul, who takes his eye of the ball to focus on unrequited love.  Not to say that Julio  is a fool, Jimenez does adore him and the doe-eyed performance of Diego Noguera is key to winning our affection and sympathy.

Bonsai is out on Friday 30th March on limited release from Network Releasing.